Back in 2010 two disappointments stood out in New York’s opera scene: Robert Lepage’s new production of Wagner’s “Rheingold,” the first installment of his “Ring” cycle at the Metropolitan Opera, and the Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca.

Mr. Lepage’s high-tech production was billed as an agile, sophisticated approach to Wagner’s mythical realms. But it was dull and vague, with more attention paid to the projection effects than the characters and their relationships. The heavy, expensive set malfunctioned at the premiere and many times after.

Around then Ms. Garanca, appearing at the Met as Carmen, was giving one perplexing performance after another, her golden voice wedded to temperamental blandness. There was a mystifyingly large gap between her seductive sound and her stolidity.

It was possible on Saturday to revisit both “Das Rheingold” and Ms. Garanca. In the afternoon the Met opened a revival of Mr. Lepage’s “Ring” cycle. In the evening Ms. Garanca gave her first New York recital at Carnegie Hall.

What has changed in three years? Not much. Mr. Lepage’s production once again malfunctioned. And in an exquisitely sung program of Schumann, Berg and Strauss with the subtle pianist Kevin Murphy, Ms. Garanca’s smooth, even voice and great beauty still distracted — but not enough — from the cool calculation of her artistry.

The only significant difference was when the breakdown occurred in “Rheingold.” In 2010 the rainbow bridge that leads the gods into Valhalla at the end failed to materialize. On Saturday the set — 24 planks that loudly shift into different configurations — abruptly halted as it rotated into the wide, tilting staircase that the gods Wotan and Loge use to descend into Nibelheim.

But even when the machinery has worked, the performances have been mechanical. As in the past, there was some good singing but little excitement in this “Rheingold,” which Fabio Luisi conducted with cheerless, brisk efficiency.

Mark Delavan has a tightly massed, focused baritone and a steady presence, but he gave little sense of Wotan’s agony. The bass-baritone Eric Owens, as the dwarf Alberich, was overpowered by the full orchestra, but both sumptuous and snarling in his curses. Stefan Margita made a lithe, sinister Loge, his tenor insinuating and strong.

There were two brief yet memorable moments of quiet melancholy. One came from Wotan’s wife, Fricka (the commanding mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe), as she revealed her worries about her husband’s fidelity.

The other was the giant Fasolt’s lament at losing Freia, the goddess he has been promised in exchange for building Valhalla. Sung with unexpectedly moving sensitivity by the bass Franz-Josef Selig, it was a reminder that the key to the “Ring” is not the loud, flashy parts, but the small eddies of emotion that find no home in Mr. Lepage’s frigid production.

Ms. Garanca’s recital was not without surges of feeling, either. But as in the “Rheingold,” they did not build into much.

Her voice remains radiantly beautiful. It has become larger in the last few years without losing its control, building up resonance in her face before soaring richly into the hall.

She was alert to the texts in a first half of Schumann songs. When “The Walnut Tree” indicated that she should whisper, she reduced her voice to a mist. In “Now You Have Caused Me My First Pain” from the cycle “Frauenliebe und -Leben,” the line “The world is void” was stark and stunning. In “Since Seeing Him,” the first song in the cycle, her voice became ever so slightly bare on the word “allein” (“alone”) in the line “Him alone I see”: a hint of darkness in a joyful moment.

Ms. Garanca’s work was more detailed than in the past. She clearly took this program seriously and prepared every note precisely. Yet the overall effect was just that: precision. In slower, lyrical passages her meticulousness was like an astringent that kept things from getting sentimental, but when the mood and tempo grew upbeat, her brightness felt ersatz.

She sang Berg’s “Seven Early Songs” with glowing tone but little sense of the cycle’s worldliness. And to work their full magic, Strauss’s songs need intimations of ecstasy that Ms. Garanca was not prepared to provide.

It was only in her second encore, a Latvian song, that she seemed fully to unite the sheen of her singing with depth of feeling. It is a combination that also sadly eludes the Met’s expensive, empty “Ring,” which values technical achievement over ideas and passion.

If that is no way to be a singer, it is also no way to direct an opera. And when the computers in Mr. Lepage’s “Ring” go haywire, there’s nothing substantial to compensate. After the malfunction on Saturday, as stagehands reached up to pull down the wayward planks manually it was clear that it was time for the Met to consider cutting its losses and abandoning this wasteful “Ring.”